Not long out from England . . . still a bit green . . . his dad’s a parson back home . . . believes we should be nice to niggers . . . married well—was the meagre reputation that Robert Goodwin had enjoyed with the men that stood before him. But, after finishing the devotion he lifted his head to say, ‘Be in no doubt all of you, I mean you to frighten every last one of those negroes and remove their livelihoods until they beg to work once more for me,’ respect soon puckered the mouth and brow of all who stared upon him.
CHAPTER 30
WHEN JULY HEARD, ‘MARGUERITE,’ whispered softly at her door, she at first believed it to be the wind breathing through a crevice. ‘Marguerite.’ Or perhaps the call of a night bat. ‘Marguerite, are you there?’ Or maybe even a duppy prowling the garden. She did not think it was the missus. For, since the missus had taken Robert Goodwin for her husband, she would have rather walked through the whole house than come by way of July’s dwelling. The missus would have sooner circled the entire garden than ascend the stairs over July’s home. Come, if the missus were ever forced by circumstance to pass by July’s abode, she would have neared the lime-washed wooden door of that intimate room under the house with her eyes closed tight shut and her ears blocked by her fists.
So when July opened her door, she was vexed to find her missus standing before her. The moonlight had dulled all colour, yet July knew that the grey pallor of her missus was her cheeks flushed with pink, her eyes rimmed with red. But that unwelcome plump face in the gap of her doorway—so anxious and fretful that even her blond curls shivered—soon had July saying, ‘Cha, wha’ you want? Me no have to serve you now.’
‘Come and sit with me,’ was what the missus said to her.
July sucked upon her teeth for a long while; being called Marguerite by this woman was what began the cuss, but its vent was lengthened for having this missus bid her, as if she were still her slave, to sit with her. Sit with her! Cha. The last time the missus had required July’s company she was still giggling upon the blueness of her overseer’s eyes.
Come, she had not looked upon July’s face since . . . well, since July’s pregnant belly became a bulge that none could miss. So aghast was the missus to realise July was carrying a child that she stared upon July’s face with the distress of a big-eyed puppy dog seized to be drowned. July had nearly felt pity for her as the missus staggered back away from that protrusion, desperate to escape its bitter meaning. Since that day, the missus had ceased even addressing July—she clapped, flapped, tushtushed, banged the table, flicked her fingers, waved her arms, but all in mute command.
‘Please, Marguerite, please come and sit with me.’ The missus was, without any doubt, pleading, and a bedevilling sound it was to July’s ear. To get this white woman gone from her door, was all July had wish of. So July, gazing carefully upon the missus said, ‘But me must look after me pickney,’ before adding, ‘Emily, me baby girl, must be fed.’
For according to the missus, July had no child. According to the missus, she had never ever, ever, seen July with a child. She had never heard a cart draw up carrying the midwife from the village. No sets of rushing feet ever ran across the veranda, down the stairs, and under the house. Caroline Goodwin did not see her husband pacing about the garden for hours and hours, biting hard upon his fingertips. Nor hear mewling break upon the air and feel the sigh of blessed relief that emitted from her husband’s chest. Never had she heard a baby crying, nor whimpering around the house. No cooing ever seeped up from under her floor. To the missus’s recollection, she had not once even heard mention of a child. Her husband had never spoken the child’s name at the dinner table, nor requested to have her brought to him after the meal. She had not chanced upon Robert rocking the child on his knee as he sat on the veranda. Nor had she ever found white christening clothes and a sweet wooden-faced doll amongst his belongings. Not one person in town that the missus could recall, had ever whispered of the shame of Caroline Goodwin’s husband keeping a negro woman with a bastard child . . . and in the same house, in the same house! No one ever spread that gossip behind their hand as the missus approached them. Why, the very idea! No, there was no child.
So when, with a quivering lip, the missus replied, ‘You may bring your baby with you, Marguerite,’ it was July, once more compelled to yield to this woman’s wishes, who did then pale grey within that moonlight.
Entering in upon the drawing room, July at once understood why her missus was driven to breach her own deceptions to seek out some companionship. Cries, yelling, shouts, banging, and screams were escaping the negro village in a furious squall that jolted through the thin glass of her window. That commotion did haunt the room. The sideboard bounced and rattled within it, the candle flames spluttered, and the daybed, where the missus bid July to lay down her baby, appeared to wobble. Having settled upon the seat before the window, July was forced to heed her missus as she pranced about the room ceaselessly chattering.
‘The negroes have driven him to this action—I mean, what choice was left to him? . . . No one does more for the negroes’ welfare than he. He cares too much . . .’
All at once, July’s awareness was snatched from her missus’s fretting when a murky pink glow framed the horizon, as if the sun were about to rise upon it. So pungent did the smell of burning become that it irritated July’s nostrils, while a gloom of smoke misted the room.
‘But niggers cannot be reasoned with. If those abolitionists in England had ever actually lived amongst negroes then they would have known it was folly to free them . . .’
A black stain of startled birds flew from the tree tops when a clear strike of repeated rifle shot caught in the air. Was it the birds that squealed so as they rounded in the sky?
‘His father is quite wrong. Negroes will never be civilised, nor will they ever do as they are bid.’
Flames, clear as the candle beside July, glimmered in the distance.
‘But now it is too late. They have been made free. Free not to work. Why, those niggers will not rest until every planter is in the workhouse . . .’
And the missus’s pacing began vibrating under July’s feet like the low rumbling of galloping horses.
The negroes were running down the lanes now, July knew it. For in her mind’s eye she was once more amongst them. All was crazed motion. Into the fields, into the trees. Seizing belongings, kicking chickens, struggling with goats. Standing flailing sticks and machetes. Cussing curses upon the white men who would dare to enter their homes. Screaming to find lost pickney. Where you be? Where you be? Confusion, smoke, fire. Run, July, run. Pull that white man from his horse and stamp upon his hand. And that one, quick, fright him with that fire stick. Mash him. Bash him. But then run. Run!
Suddenly, without warning, July had to slap her hand across her mouth to catch the vomit that began to spew from her.
‘Marguerite, where are you going?’ her missus yelled as July fled from that room.
July’s sick splattered over the veranda. She retched. Her throat was scoured hoarse by it. And she retched. Her stomach ached with it.